Needle Coke Market Is Expected To Reach To 1,350.3 Kilo Tons By 2025 – Credence Research

According to a new market report published by Credence Research “Global Needle Coke Market Growth, Future Prospects and Competitive Analysis, 2017 – 2025,” the needle coke market volume is expected to reach to 1,350.3 kilo tons by 2025, expanding at a CAGR of 5.1% from 2017 to 2025

The rising demand from end use industry such as steel is the key factor driving the market growth. Steel making is done by two methods: BOF (Basic Oxygen Furnace) and EAF (Electric Arc Furnace). Though BOF is much stronger than EAF route of steel making, the EAF route is slated to out power BOF in the future due to factors like, less environmental emissions, extreme high temperature operations, less facility space and high production output with less inventories. Overall operational expenditure is much lesser than BOF steel making route.

The EAF route has led to the market growth of needle coke, globally. Higher production of steel through EAF route and consolidation of graphite producers are likely to boost the needle coke market, globally, in the coming years. With the fluctuations in oil prices, since 2015, the consolidation is expected to bring about improvement in needle coke prices. Needle coke is majorly a derivative of crude oil. Hence, the crude oil price plays an important role in determination of graphite electrodes and correspondingly in the prices of needle coke.

Higher production of steel in China till 2016 followed by its unprecedented dumping in other countries have led to an undue pressure on graphite electrode prices. This has directly affected the prices of needle coke since there is a direct co-relation between steel production via EAF route, graphite electrodes and needle coke prices.

In the past couple of decades, there has been positive co-relation between crude oil and graphite electrode price. Crude oil price has seen a high of US$ 150/barrel to a low of US$ 20/barrel. This has eventually resulted in needle coke price variation as US$ 2,200/ton in FY08-09 to US$ 4,350/ton in FY14-15 to a low of US$ 450/ton in 2016. In 2017, the prices have again risen to US$ 3,200/ton.

Major factors seen in the sudden rise are: shutting down of Chinese steel industries due to environmental concerns and high supply of needle coke in these nonfunctional steel plants, high dumping rate of needle coke since China is the largest market for needle coke in terms of annual import, production and consumption. These reasons have affected global needle coke market value chain. The needle coke manufacturers were finding it difficult to meet the demands from graphite electrode manufacturers. Though the prices have risen to normal levels, there is still skepticism in terms of availability of needle coke as there is high waiting period in terms of availability.

As a thumb rule in steel production, approximately 3kg of graphite electrode is used for the production of a ton of steel. Equivalent amount of needle coke is used for the production of graphite electrodes